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I Learned About the Internet Yesterday

I thought I knew about the Internet but now I know I didn't really get it.  Which is pretty remarkable because I work for Google, am 36 years old (37 in two days), and have followed technology pretty closely.  I'm also a medium adopter, an investor in a Web 2.0 start up, and generally consider myself to be fairly in-the-know on this stuff.  I guess I have to play the, "but I'm only in HR" card to let myself off the hook (not too many times I can use that actually).

But today, I'm different than I was yesterday, because I experienced the reach of the Internet in a unique and very personal way.  One of my guest posts on Brazen Careerist got picked up on Wired.com, and then over to Valleywag, and then InformationWeek, and onwards around the Internet.  The number of hits to this blog, and to the Brazen Careerist site were substantial given the traffic patterns that developed.  Now, intellectually, I know all about the reach of the Internet and how it truly creates a World Wide Web, the theory behind The Long Tail, yada yada yada.  It was just so...mind-boggling... to see it happen, hour by hour, with the traffic counters spinning up and all.  When you are involved in it personally, it gives you a whole new appreciation for the power of the Internet.  I'm sure many other bloggers have experienced this sort of spike in traffic, but until it happens, I think it's hard to appreciate.  For example, here's a reference to that post in German.

So all of this is good and well, and there's a 'cool factor' to having something you created spread around the world and having others read it (although being called a douche by Valleywag readers was ...er...odd) but what is amazing is the personal connections it created.  I had authentic, very human interactions with people I may never meet that either commented or email me or generally connected with me.   

Blogging is such... a remarkable thing.   Ironically today it has left me at a significant loss for words.

I guess it's like this: Sometimes you hear about things that are big, and you see them and see that they are big, you rationally understand that they are big, but you don't really understand that they are big until you experience them.   

That's what happened when I learned about the Internet yesterday.

 

Netflix Prize: Stories in Stories, Part V

In my continued following of the Netflix Prize, I popped over to the Netflix Leaderboard again tonight, and there are now 21,076 contestants competing for the prize, from 140+ different countries.   That's 50% more contestants added to the captive pool of software development talent they have gathered since November of last year (only 4 months ago).  From a talent acquisition perspective, it's fascinating that the momentum continues to build even after the media buzz has worn off. 

The group that I interviewed in a previous post (see the categories at right to review the history on this topic) has dropped to number 5.   

Many companies pay for referrals of talent through employee referral programs and also external programs such as H3, or simply by buying research (essentially lists of names) from recruitment companies.  Buying names can be expensive, and good researchers will charge $100 an hour for their work (sometimes more).  Many companies pay thousands of dollars per successful referral.  It is interesting that on a per name basis, each software developer that is working on the prize cost Netflix less than $50 apiece (assuming the $1M is the all-in cost - which it probably is when you consider net present value; ie they haven't had to pay anything yet). 

The teams are nearly 70% of the way to the 10% improvement goal of improving the Netflix collaborative filtering engine. 
 

On Hedgehogs

I've been thinking a lot about value creation and creating a link with the customer. I think it's because I've been reading this really great book from the 1990's called Lean Thinking.  It is a great book and applies to recruiting in ways that are highly relevant but not readily apparent.  Now, I know there is a whole new iteration of TQM/Six Sigma/Lean/Whatever the Next New Thing of This Decade Is but applying these principles to an HR value stream has the potential for huge returns.

I can trace a large portion of my success as a recruiting leader of large corporate recruiting departments to Hedgehogs.   Or, more specifically, to the idea of a Hedgehog Concept.  My team at Starbucks I'm sure got tired of me talking about hedgehogs.  I actually have bought little stuffed hedgehogs for everyone on any of my teams, for the last 5 years of my career, because I believe the idea is paramount to driving organizational success.  So I guess I'm a Hedgehog Zealot.

The principle is simple, but it seems like so many organizations get it wrong.  I think it's rooted in human nature to get it wrong and overthink things based on faulty assumptions.   The idea of a Hedgehog Concept is to really understand, in foundational terms, how doing X drives the economic engine of the organization (or the customer).  This is where a lot of HR departments go awry.  For talent acquisition departments, it is really clear that we drive the economic engine of the company by delivering the best talent, for the lowest cost, in the shortest amount of time.  It is really that simple. 

But what inevitably happens is organizational inefficiency sets in (like a cancer) because people make decisions based on faulty assumptions, which creates huge waste in the talent supply chain.  Pretty soon people have completely lost track of how they drive the economic engine of the company, and productivity is replaced by activity, much of which creates no economic value.  Having a very clear Hedgehog Concept helps prevent this.

One key to driving organizational success is distilling the Hedgehog Concept down to the level of each member on the team, so that their efforts in turn map only to organizational value creation, and not to ancillary activities.  In many ways, this is the differentiator between top talent and average talent:  top talent can always see the hedgehog concept in any pursuit, and they are able to strip away the unnecessary activities and focus on the value creation.  That's why they get more done than their counterparts to the left on the bell curve.

Spending time doing a deep dive to understand value creation for the customer is one of the most productive things you can do when defining strategic direction.   

 

The 12 Phases of Becoming a Blogger (for an average guy)

So it's been awhile since I've posted, but mostly because I've been guest-blogging over at Brazen Careerist so it's not for lack of effort on my part.  I've actually been writing a lot, in fact.  Just not posting here.  It's interesting to be writing on someone else's blog, as it creates a whole new dynamic for me.  It's a little strange really. 

I think many bloggers like me go through a series of steps in their blogging career.  I'll call them The 12 Phases of Becoming a Blogger (for an average guy).

1. I can't do a blog.  I'm not qualified.
2. I could do a blog, but no one would read.
3. If I did do a blog, some people would read.
4. Once I started a blog, I would run out of things to write about.
5. I'm going to try blogging, but I don't know how to set it up.
6. People would probably help me set it up, so I'm going to try and do this.
7. I now have a blog, and it's hard to fit writing into my life, but I think about things diferently.
8. I've been writing a little bit, and I'm running out of things to say.
9. I'm starting to fit blogging into my normal weekly routine.
10. I have way too much to write about that I no longer have the time to write about everything I want to say.
11. I've met a few people through my blogging.
12. Blogging has changed so much about my life.

At least that's how it went for me.  Every step for me in my blogging experience has been from other people pulling me into the blogosphere.  In that, blogging is unlike so many other things in life.

I had a pretty funny example of Radical Transparency happen to me today while in a meeting with my executive team at Google.  We were having an offsite at The Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto, and discussing the strategic direction of the Online Sales and Operations group and some other topics.  At one point we got to talking about the people side of the business, and the idea of employee engagement.   Google's employee base is a pretty happy bunch of people, as that's why we won the top spot on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to work for in America this year. 

So I'm new, and trying to make an impression and generally contribute to the discussion, even though my head is spinning from trying to get up to speed in my new job.   And then right in the middle of the meeting I say, in my most profound voice, "Someone once said that most jobs are too small for the human spirit..."  Now, I really believe this is true.  And apparently, it really resonated with the team, because a bunch of the leaders in the room were nodding their heads and asking me to repeat it so they could write it down. 

So here's where it get's funny.  One of the leaders says, "Hey, let's find out who said that..." as in, let's found out what famous person coined such a remarkably insightful proverb.  So I think nothing of it, and 1-2 minutes later, this guy starts laughing and says, "I found out who came up with that quote."  And everyone looks, and he points at me.  The only reference on the entire Internet to that specific phrase is by yours truly in an interview with Jason Goldberg a year or two ago.  You can see for yourself here.

So, you have to be careful what you say in a Radically Transparent world, in more ways than you might think.